Euro blueprint gives Brussels economic sovereignty over members

Eurozone countries would lose the right to set their own budgets and end up surrendering economic sovereignty to Brussels under a blueprint to “complete” the European Union’s single currency.

A masterplan for “completion of economic and monetary union” has been set out in a confidential document to be discussed by EU leaders at a Brussels summit next week.

In the nine-page paper, seen by The Daily Telegraph, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council – the monthly summits of EU leaders – charts a series of steps from ongoing financial reforms to overall political union for the eurozone. “The general objective will be to aim for a progressive pooling of economic sovereignty at the European level,” the paper states.

Fed clears China’s first US bank takeover

Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia.

The transaction will make ICBC the first Chinese state-controlled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States.

ICBC has been the most aggressive of China’s “big four” banks in expanding overseas.

According to the Fed the bank has total assets of roughly $2.5 trillion.

It will buy up to 80 percent of the US unit of the Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia, which operates 13 branches in New York and California.

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The broad expansion of China’s footprint in the US market comes amid a series of financial reforms in China that could begin to open the lucrative market to US firms.

Full article: Fed clears China’s first US bank takeover (Yahoo!)